


et in arcadia ego

by gwendolynflight



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Eliot and Jules teaming up and working together, Gen, Mental Institutions, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 00:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15231852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolynflight/pseuds/gwendolynflight
Summary: After the Library and Irene MacAllister gained control of magic, they devised a different punishment for our questers, trapping each in a Scarlotti's Web. For Quentin, they added a special touch.





	et in arcadia ego

**Author's Note:**

> For the Magicians Bingo Summer 2018 Challenge Week 1 Illusion, filling the Bingo squares Amnesia and Rescue Mission. Missed the deadline, so this is a nonofficial entry, I guess? But I wanted to share the story anyway. :)

Quentin had been in the mental ward for three weeks, he thought. Time tended to blur and fade as the days passed. He’d checked himself in after his second semester at Yale - the business classes had proven stultifying after his English lit major, and life had started to feel pointless again. What was the point of a degree in finance? A career in finance? Decades of life stretching out before him, emails and reports and mandatory meetings and team building bullshit.

He’d rather die.

His mistake was telling Jules. She’d gotten very quiet and serious, and talked him into checking in. 

He was supposed to be focusing on getting better, the doctors said. But for what? The rest of his MBA?

“Quentin,” a nurse said, leaning into his room through the barely cracked door, her black bob waving with the motion. “Time for group.”

Quentin followed her to the large room where they held group; twelve chairs in a circle. The room had no windows, so despite its size it had Quentin feeling claustrophobic. He hunched in on himself, tucking his hands into the sleeves of his gray institutional hoodie.

The other chairs filled slowly. Quentin hadn’t bothered to learn anyone else’s name, and he didn’t listen as they started speaking. He sank into himself, and thought about nothing, and was nothing.

* * *

The summer passed like this. The staff were perfectly fine. Made sure Quentin took his meds, went to group, didn’t force him to talk.

Part of Quentin felt like there was something unusual about this, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

The best days were art therapy days, when he was parked in front of an easel and allowed to vanish into his own world. He had no talent for painting or sketching or pastels, but at least he could be alone with his thoughts. 

They were dark thoughts, mostly. Jules hadn’t been to visit him in a while. Actually, he couldn’t remember the last time anyone had visited him. He began to feel forgotten, and like he should be forgotten. He wasn’t responding to therapy, and his meds made him feel flat, and gray, and distant, not better. He should talk to someone about it, get his meds adjusted, start talking in group. He needed to get himself together before the next semester started

But it felt like the world was moving on without him. He only had Jules, and his dad, kind of. Their relationship was distantly cordial, at best. And neither Jules nor his dad had bothered to come see him, so did he actually have anything?

A tall patient, thin with curly black hair, came onto him a few times. Quentin felt a mix of flattered and, well, nervous, really, and the nerves and his own apathy made him avoid the man.

Some days they played cards, and Quentin’s hands twitched with strange impulses. But he cut the deck and shuffled neatly, and sank back into the fog.

* * *

The semester had started. Quentin was late, and hadn’t registered for classes or told his advisor about his hospitalization. Any attempted communication would have bounced back, unless they’d contacted his father. He should be panicking about this, he should be frantic about losing his spot at Yale. Yale! Jules had joked that it was one of the lesser Ivies, but only someone as brilliant as Jules could joke like that. Quentin was smart enough, as things went, but he hadn’t really belonged at Yale, he knew that now. Not like Jules did. 

So instead of panic he felt … nothing.

* * *

One of the other patients cornered him in a linen closet. The other man was no taller than him, but much larger, broad with fat and muscle. He slapped Quentin's ass, pulled him close to his broad belly, and said, “I'll let you blow me for your extra pills.”

Quentin knew he should feel fear. “That's a terrible offer.”

The bigger man grinned. “Guess I'll take ‘em for free, then.”

“I haven't got any extras,” Quentin admitted.

The big man frowned at that, and slapped Quentin so hard that he staggered back into the shelves, knocking bottles askew. A roll of toilet paper fell to the floor. “Wrong answer.”

He started to hurt Quentin then. Quentin yelled, until the man put one big hand over his mouth. Hard enough to bruise. Slammed Quentin back into the shelves, knocking over bottles and stacks of supplies with a loud clatter. Quentin kicked out, flailing. His arms were trapped between them.

The door opened. An orderly, frowning, looked at them. “What the hell is going on in here?”

“Nothing,” the big man snarled, turning to glare at the orderly. His grip tightened on Quentin, who was mostly hidden by the larger man’s frame.

“Get on back to your room, now,” the orderly said firmly, crossing burly arms.

The man stormed out, slamming the door behind him. The orderly told him to get out, too, and left. Quentin leaned against the shelves for a while, hand cradling his stinging cheek.

* * *

Even that couldn't shake Quentin out of his stupor. The bigger patient found someone else to hassle. Quentin drifted through the days, which increasingly seemed the same. Patients arrived, occasionally. Some left, more rarely. Quentin's doctor, a genial black man with wire-rimmed glasses, made encouraging noises about his progress, but said nothing about release, or even the possibility of release. 

It didn't seem to matter.

* * *

Quentin sank into a fog. Time had a way of skimming past. He looked up and it was Halloween, the nurses in costumes, dishes of candy on the tables; they made orange and black paper garlands in art therapy. A pretty blonde woman had a screaming fit about black cats.

She looked vaguely familiar, but Quentin was in his fog, and didn’t pay much attention.

* * *

It was a few days before Christmas. He hadn’t seen anyone from his former like in half a year, now. They’d forgotten about him. Some of the others were getting visitors, some for the first time in months as holiday guilt kicked in. Quentin had hoped just a little, just faintly, but that tiny kernel of hope withered as more and more time passed and Jules still didn’t come.

The staff had decorated for the season, lots of tinsel and multicolored strings of lights. A lot of the other patients were getting excited, the ones not too drugged to notice the passage of time. The staff brought in little treats, plates of cookies or cupcakes, wore santa hats and ugly sweaters.

Quentin mostly hid in his room, when allowed. 

On a Tuesday that didn’t initially seem different from any other Tuesday, an orderly opened his door without knocking and said, “You have a visitor.”

Heart thumping, Quentin stood and asked, “My dad?”

The orderly snorted. "Maybe, I don’t know. Just get to the visitor’s room.”

Quentin went.

The visitor’s room was separated from the patients by two sets of double doors, like an airlock. Quentin tapped on the glass, and the nurse on duty checked her list and then buzzed him through. He hadn’t been to the visitor’s room in months, and he looked around the room with its tall windows and battered furniture for his dad, or Jules.

That was the extent of his list. He thought very briefly about James, but James had never visited him in here, and he was dully certain that James never would.

But scanning the room, he didn’t see anyone he knew. A dark-haired man of roughly his father’s build raised his hopes briefly, but the man turned around and Quentin saw that it wasn’t his dad, and his heart fell.

He turned back to the doors, tapping on the glass to get the nurse’s attention. When she looked up, he said, “I think there’s been a mistake.”

“What’s that, hon?”

He leaned closer. “I don’t have a visitor,” he admitted, face a little hot. “I need to come back through.”

She looked humiliatingly sympathetic, and started to buzz him back through - but just then, someone called his name.

Quentin turned to see who it was, and saw a young, very handsome man with his arm raised. “Quentin,” he called again, taking a step forward.

Quentin blinked at him. He looked sort of like one of the patients, though of course much more dapper and groomed.

“There he is,” the nurse said, her voice tinny through the little speaker box. “Go on, honey.”

Just to avoid making a scene, Quentin shuffled toward the man, who looked … even more like that patient, but also excited to see him. “Quentin!” he said again, reaching out a hand, “We found you!”

The man was standing next to a small, beautiful woman who also looked excited to see him, and Quentin looked between them, bewildered. “I think there’s been a mistake …” he said slowly.

“What do you mean?” the woman asked. “We’re here, but it’s up to you to end this.”

Quentin squinted at the man. “You’re not, um, were you ever a patient here?”

The man blinked rapidly. “Oh, I. No. No, but maybe you recognize me from somewhere else?” he asked hopefully.

Quentin shook his head. “No, I don’t, um, I guess I don’t know you.”

The man’s expression fell, along with his outstretched hand. “Quentin,” he said, his tone wounded.

A shiver went through Quentin, and he took a step back. “Sorry, I think you, you’re looking for someone else.” He wrapped his arms around his middle, unable to look at their disappointed faces. “Sorry,” he said again.

“Not as sorry as that cunt’s going to be,” the woman said obliquely.

Quentin took another step back. “What?”

The man shushed her, and tried to smile at Quentin, an odd, strained expression. “Never mind that.” He reached out his hand again. “I’m Eliot, Eliot Waugh.”

Quentin licked his lips nervously, looking down at the hand, back to Eliot’s odd, hopeful expression, and then he reached out to shake it. “Um, I’m Quentin Coldwater.”

“We know," the woman muttered, but Quentin was watching Eliot’s expression, and it went from hopeful to triumphant. 

Something anxious twisted in Quentin’s stomach, and he tried to pull back, but Eliot gripped his hand tight, pulled him closer, and the woman was latching onto both of them, making Quentin jump, and he tried to wriggle free but Eliot was saying, “I think this calls for a change of scene,” and Quentin’s heart leapt into his throat and there was a surge of something that Quentin couldn’t define, a diffuse electric charge that shuddered through his very core, awakening things long silent - and the visitor’s room blurred about them, colors running together like wet pastels -

And then they were somewhere else.

Quentin got the impression of an apartment, tall ceilings, boho-chic decor, and the two finally let him go and he staggered back away from them, eyes darting about looking for an escape, trying to figure out what the hell just happened. “What?” he choked, “what just, where are we, what?”

Eliot put up both hands in a soothing gesture. “You know us, Quentin. I’m Eliot, this is Margo. We’re your best friends.”

“I don’t, I don’t know you.” Quentin was gasping like he’d run a mile. The whole room seemed to be getting darker. “I don’t …”

“We don’t have time for this,” the woman, Margo, said, raising her hands.

“Wait,” Eliot said, “just give him a minute.”

But Margo’s fingers were moving in odd, intricate patterns, and she was muttering in a language Quentin couldn’t identify. Quentin scrabbled back, fear of something, he couldn’t have said what, shooting through him. And where her hands moved he thought he could see glimmers of light …

The air was charged like the feeling just before a thunderstorm, raising the hairs on the back of Quentin’s neck, on his arms.

Then Margo made a final gesture -

And the storm broke.

Quentin felt a pain in his head, like an ice pick had been driven right down its center. He was on his knees. The room seemed to flash and bulge. The tall handsome man looked worried. Quentin was lying on the wood floor, flat on his face. His head was splitting open. Someone was screaming.

Then darkness.

* * *

He was in a soft bed.

The handsome man was sitting on the edge of it. When Quentin stirred, he held a cup of water to Quentin’s lips. Quentin’s throat felt like it had been shredded, and he took a few sips gratefully.

“I’m so sorry,” the man said as Quentin sank back into the dark.

* * *

The woman was there the next time he woke up. Quentin wanted to shrink back from her, but his body seemed sort of disconnected from the rest of him, and he didn’t move. Just his eyes, and when they glanced around she put a soft hand on his brow and helped him drink some more water. “You in there, Q?” she asked, sounding more subdued than he’d expected.

But even that drained any energy he had, and he was back in the dark.

* * *

They were arguing. In the next room, maybe, but yelling loudly enough that he could hear snippets.

“He’s not going to wake up on his own!” 

That was the man. Quentin wondered if he should pretend to still be out. He held still.

The woman said something, and then the man yelled, “We need help!”

“... trying to get us caught?” The woman.

Were they criminals, Quentin wondered. They had kidnapped him, somehow, and the woman was worried about being caught.

They were criminals, Quentin decided, and he needed to figure out how to escape.

But weariness dragged him back under.

* * *

The man was holding one of Quentin’s hands when he next woke. He looked worried, and the worry on his handsome face made something in Quentin’s heart twinge. Even though this man was clearly a criminal who had kidnapped him, Quentin could respect another man’s delusions, and this man looked like he believed that he cared.

And Quentin had been alone and abandoned for so long that he … squeezed the man’s hand.

And when the man’s head snapped up and he looked relieved, Quentin tried to smile for him.

“Q?” the man said hopefully.

Quentin’s smile faded. “Um. Eddie?” he guessed.

The man’s face fell. Quentin felt another strange pang. “No, it’s Eliot,” the man said dully.

“Eliot, right.” Quentin looked at him helplessly. “Sorry.”

Eliot shrugged. “It’s not your fault.”

Quentin gnawed at his lip for a moment, watching the emotions move across Eliot’s mobile face. “You said we’re friends?”

“Yeah,” Eliot laughed sadly. “You could say that. Friends.”

“But I don’t know you,” Quentin pointed out gently.

Eliot’s eyes closed on something painful. “There was a spell to .. cover up your memory.”

“A spell …” Quentin’s throat felt a little dry.

“Yes,” Eliot sighed, sounding almost bored. “Magic is real.”

Great, Quentin thought, his cute kidnapper was also completely delusional.

“I’ll prove it to you,” Eliot offered, raising his hands.

“No, that’s okay,” Quentin blurted, scooting back on the bed -

As Eliot moved both hands in strangely complicated gestures, said something in another language, and held a small sun between both palms.

The air had that electric feel to it. Quentin stared at the small sun, amazed. At Eliot. At the sun, again, looking for the secret to the trick.

“That’s some of the best sleight of hand I’ve ever seen,” Quentin said admiringly. “Show me how?”

Eliot sighed, and pushed his palms together. The sun seemed to intensify, and now that Quentin was really looked at it, its surface boiling with heat and fire, he started to wonder. Eliot said something else, and the sun disappeared.

Quentin looked at the outfit Eliot was wearing, a button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, a patterned vest and slim trousers. “Okay, really, where are you hiding it?”

“Nowhere. That was a spell.” Eliot ran a hand over his brow, looking frustrated. He started making more gestures. “Here, look!”

Fireworks burst forth from his fingers. The colors splashed across the room, pinks and blues and yellows, electric and glowing. The sound was immense in the small space, the heat unbelievable. 

Quentin stared, amazed.

The sound died down, the lights faded. Quentin swallowed. “Magic is … real?”

Eliot smiled, relieved. “Magic is real, and you're a magician, Quentin, like me.”

“You're saying that I can do that?” Quentin shook his head. “I'm not … life isn't this special, I'm not … special.”

Eliot grabbed Quentin's hands in his, staring into his eyes intently. “You are, Quentin, I promise. You're just …”

“Under a spell, right,” Quentin said skeptically. 

“Do a spell with me,” Eliot said, his voice low and urgent. “Just give it a try.”

Quentin gnawed on his lip for a moment. If Eliot was telling the truth, then … then life had meaning, and he was special, and it would be worth going on. If he was lying, or delusional, Quentin could always find a way to kill himself later. “Okay,” he said, “let's let's do a spell.”

Eliot sat across from him on the bed, and held out both hands, prompting Quentin to copy him.

Quentin followed his motions, and strangely, it seemed that as his hands moved through the air it became … more present. Not solid, or even thicker, but like was more aware of it, and his hands interacting with it. He twisted his fingers and repeated Eliot's words.

And his hands got warm.

Like, really warm. Hot, even, and Quentin yelped, shaking his hands as if that would get it off, whatever it was. It was burning him, he was burning -

Eliot said something, moved his fingers, and Quentin's invisible fire went out.

He leaned back, gasping. His hands shook very slightly. His fingers were red, burned. “Holy shit.”

Eliot peered at him hopefully. “Quentin?”

Quentin held out one hand. “That was … That was real.” His voice gained volume and excitement as he went on. “Magic is real. Magic is real!”

Eliot grinned at him, with him, Quentin was vibrating with excitement and Eliot seemed really happy to see him happy. Maybe they really were friends. “Eliot,” he said slowly, testing. Eliot waited patiently for him to continue. “We’re … we're really friends?”

“Yes, Quentin.”

“Okay.” Quentin took a breath. “Tell me something only a friend would know.”

“I guess your love for Fillory doesn't count,” Eliot said teasingly.

Quentin blinked. “What's Fillory?”

Eliot looked like he might cry, for a moment. Then his back stiffened, and he said, “Your best friend is Julia Wicker.”

Quentin perked up. “That’s true! That’s … you know Jules?”

Eliot looked at him keenly. “What if I could bring her here?”

Quentin bit his lip. It would help reassure him, true, but if this guy was crazy after all, he didn’t want to put Jules in danger. “If, I mean, if you know her, I guess …”

“Okay, hang tight,” Eliot said, and vanished.

Quentin stared at the place where he’d been. “More magic?” he wondered.

It hadn’t felt like the other magic, but what did he know.

Left alone, Quentin poked around the apartment. There was a bright blue accent wall, and a bar-height counter between the small kitchen and the living room. Quentin felt the strangest sense of deja vu. It reminded him of Julia’s place, actually. He’d roomed with James back in undergrad, but they’d certainly spent enough time at Julia’s that he thought he’d recognize it. But if it were Julia’s apartment then she’d be here, he reasoned, so it must just have a similar style. 

Also, there were some very odd knicknacks. A Virgin Mary statue that wept milk when he picked it up. “Gross,” he whispered, setting it back on the shelf. A big, heavy brass key on the coffee table that didn’t look like it would open anything in the apartment. 

When Quentin picked it up, his vision blanked out strangely. The apartment seemed to vanish, and, startled, he dropped the key.

His vision cleared up, and the apartment re-solidified around him. Shaken, Quentin sat on the couch for a moment, rubbing at his eyes. “What the hell,” he muttered, sagging back into the soft cushions. He suddenly felt exhausted again, drained. 

He blinked.

Julia was standing in front of him.

“Gah!” Quentin tried to spring back, only to hit the back of the sofa and bounce forward into Julia’s startled arms. 

They both nearly fell, but Julia managed to stay on her feet and grab Quentin’s shoulders, steadying him. “Q, oh my god, are you okay? How are you holding up?”

Quentin’s hands latched onto Julia’s arms. “Jules,” he breathed, staring at her. “Jules, it’s you, oh my god.”

She tried to smile, but it was a wavering effort. “I’m here now. I’m, Q, I’m so sorry we couldn’t find you sooner.”

He tilted his head. “What do you mean, find me? I was in Midtown, like always.”

Julia pulled back a little, and Quentin, taking the hint, extracted himself from her grip and shuffled back until his legs knocked into the coffee table. “Quentin,” Julia said, “you weren’t in Midtown.”

Quentin wrapped both arms around his middle. “Jules?”

She folded her hands, such a familiar gesture that Quentin felt a pang in his gut. “This is a spell,” she said.

“What is?” 

“This. This apartment, this world. You’re trapped in a dream, it’s a spell called Scarlotti’s Web.” She paused, looked strangely guilty, though he couldn’t think why. “You’ve been trapped in one before, and you escaped. You just need to … do that again.”

Quentin sat back down.

“So none of this,” he waved his hands around, indicating the apartment, “none of this is real?”

Julia looked very sincere. “It’s all in your mind. But,” she frowned, “something’s different this time. Eliot said you don’t remember Fillory.”

“Yeah, what is Fillory, and who’s Eliot?”

Julia came over and sat next to him, her back very straight and her face sympathetic. “We’ve been to Fillory, Q. It’s real, like magic is real. But something went wrong, and we … made some enemies. One of them captured you, and trapped you here. We’ve been … we’ve been looking for you for a long time, and.” She sniffed, and he realized her eyes were bright with tears. “It’s not like the spell was before, you still knew who you are, what you are.”

“So Fillory is a magic … place?”

“She must have erased your memories,” Julia said, swiping at her nose. “Not all of them, just the ones that would have let you escape.”

Quentin looked around the apartment, which looked perfectly normal and real. “None of this makes any sense.” He stood, running both hands through his hair. 

Then Eliot was standing there, and Quentin flinched back. Eliot looked from him to Julia, and asked, “Didn’t you tell him?”

Julia shrugged helplessly. “I tried. I’m not sure he believed me.”

“I believe you,” Quentin said, pacing. “I just. This is. This is crazy, Jules, you know that, right? This is. This is real.” He rapped his knuckles on the countertop. “See, real! What, this doesn’t.”

“It’s as real as you want it to be,” Eliot said, taking a cautious step forward. “This is your mind, you control everything in it.”

“Oh, so if I wanted to see you naked -”

And Eliot’s clothes vanished.

“Oh my god.”

Julia put a hand over her mouth. 

Eliot seemed not the least discomfited, putting one hand on his hip.

“I.” Quentin couldn’t help glancing down, forced his eyes back up. “I did that?”

Eliot nodded, smirking. 

Julia giggled, barely muffling the sound with her palm.

“So, so this is all, just, all my mind.” Quentin felt a giggle bubble up, and suddenly there were balloons filling the apartment, all the free space of it, Julia and Eliot vanished behind multi-colored spheres.

“Q!” Julia squealed.

Quentin staggered back, the balloons feeling surprisingly real, bumping gently against him and filling his hair with static. He giggled again, feeling slightly hysterical.

The balloons all popped, revealing Julia, red-faced and giggling; Eliot, back in his clothes, looking indulgently amused. “Believe us now?”

Quentin’s hair was still staticky, and he shrugged. “I guess?”

“That’s something.” Eliot rolled his eyes. “So can we get out of here?”

“How, uh, how do we do that?”

Julia’s last giggle faded. “Um, we’re not sure. We have everything we need on our side. You just have to … wake up.”

“Now that you know it’s a spell,” Eliot said, “it should be fairly easy. We think.”

Quentin looked between them. “Well, how did I get out of it before?”

Julia looked guilty, again. Eliot shrugged. “You didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Geez, talk about shooting myself in the foot.” Quentin sighed. “So, any ideas?”

“If I were Tom Cruise I’d jump off a roof,” Eliot muttered.

“Eliot!” Julia snapped.

He shrugged. “Vanilla Sky? No? Then I got nothing.”

Quentin had thought about jumping off a few roofs in his time, but he found that … he really didn’t want to.

He wanted to live. If all this, if he had friends and magic and all of this, he wanted to live.  
Julia was looking at something on the coffee table. It was the brass key he’d picked up earlier, and her hand was creeping toward it.

“Jules, don’t!”

“What?”

“It’s …” Quentin gulped a breath. “It, um, it’s weird.”

Julia gave him an odd look and picked it up.

She didn’t react, and Quentin deflated. “It’s not … nothing looked weird?”

Julia didn’t look like something was weird. She looked … excited. “Q, this is the truth key.”

“What?”

“We went on a quest, there were keys,” Eliot said hastily, stepping toward the table. “That’s the truth key?”

“It’s not working, but yeah.”

“It, um. It was working. Earlier.” Quentin said. 

“It showed you something?” Julia asked intently.

Quentin shivered. “Not really. Everything just … went black.”

Eliot grabbed the key from Julia, then looked disappointed. “So it did work. It showed you the truth. You’re unconscious.” He dropped the key back onto the table. “But it’s not real.”

“But this proves something,” Julia said slowly. “It proves that some part of you must remember.” She stood up, galvanized. “This apartment, it looks … it looks like my old apartment.”

Quentin’s head came up. “It does! I wasn’t just imagining it.”

“And if this is here, maybe the other stuff you were supposed to forget is, too.”

Quentin peered at Eliot. “I think you were one of the other patients.”

Eliot paused. “You said something like that before. So the other people in the clinic … they were people you knew.”

Quentin shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Okay, so something is still in there. She couldn’t wipe you completely.” Julia paced across the living room. “Maybe there’s something in here that can spark your memory.” She paused by the book shelves, picking up the Virgin Mary statuette, put it back down. 

Eliot started looking around too, and Quentin watched them, not sure what he should be doing. 

“Wait,” Julia said suddenly. “The table!”

“The table?” Eliot asked, voice dry.

Julia dashed around the couch to the side table, and turned it onto its side.

There was a map painted on the underside of the tabletop. Quentin stepped closer. “Jules?”

She was beaming. “We drew it when we were kids,” she told Eliot, told both of them really. “We spent a lot of afternoons under there, playing, talking about what we’d do if we got to go.”

Something stirred in Quentin’s mind. “It’s a map,” he observed, the thought tickling something in him.

Julia smiled at him. “Our map of Fillory.”

That word again. “Fillory.” He winced, brows creasing.

“I think it’s working,” Eliot said. 

“Let’s,” Julia started, bursting into motion, “let’s get underneath, like when we were kids.”

She righted the table, and grabbed Quentin’s hand. He crawled underneath with her, and then they were lying on the floor, side by side, looking up at the crudely drawn map. 

Eliot knelt beside them, watching the process anxiously.

The splinter of pain in Quentin's brain pierced deeper. He squinted at the map, tracing its lines and the words traced in childish handwriting - Fillory, the Flying Forest. Castle Whitespire. And it was so strange. He could almost see those places, see himself in those places, like a distant memory. “Jules?” he breathed. 

“It's real,” Julia assured him, smiling softly up at the map. “And we've been there.”

Quentin breathed faster, his chest heaving minutely beneath his sweatshirt. “Jane,” he murmured. His brow furrowed. “Who's Jane?”

“Jane Chatwin,” Eliot said, expectantly. “You met her, Q.”

Quentin closed his eyes, and he could almost see her - taller than him, red hair in a neat chignon, dressed like a - “She was an EMT?” Quentin blinked. What did that have to do with Fillory?

“When we first met her, yes!” Julia said, excited. “That was the day we first went to Brakebills, Q, you're remembering!”

“Is this enough?” Eliot asked, poking his head under the table. “Will this wake him up?”

“I don't know,” Julia said helplessly. Her hand crept over, and took Quentin's. “What are you feeling, Q?”

“I'm not sure,” he murmured, looking at Julia, then at Eliot. “Were we?”

Eliot leaned forward. “Yes?”

Quentin looked at his handsome face, the strain at the corners of his eyes, the barest glint of hope. “Did we ever …?”

Eliot smiled slowly. “Yes, yes we did.”

Quentin glanced down, blushing. “Oh, that's. That's, um. Good. Yeah."

Julia hid a snicker behind her hand. Eliot was smiling at him openly. “It's good to have you back, Q.”

An anxious feeling was starting up inside him. “Jules?”

“Yeah, Q?”

“What, um. What are our lives like? Out, out there?”

She smiled an odd half-smile. “They’re ... well, lively, I guess.”

Eliot snorted. “Positively animated.”

Quentin breathed. “In a good way?”

Julia looked thoughtful. “I suppose you could say that.”

Quentin thought of the life he'd expected, the endless slog into meaninglessness, the eternal niggling thought in the back of his mind that killing himself might be better …

And firmed his resolve. “I’ll take it.”


End file.
